ScreenScribe

The networks won’t be setting the new year alight with any HD programming fireworks. Even by the diminishing programming standards of free-to-air TV, the line-up for the first week of 2013 is an astonishingly damp squib. There’s nothing new of note in HD on TV One to report while TV2 offers only the network HD […]

Network Movie: Blood Diamond (TV One, 9.30, 5.1) This is an exciting, suspenseful dramatisation of how the illegal diamond trade fueled civil war in Sierra Leone. While director Edward Zwick glamourises the horrors with a rich vein of Hollywood hokum that emphasises adventure over agenda, not even the 24-carat casting of Leonardo DiCaprio as a fearless rogue and […]

The final, semi-final and opening of the 2011 Rugby World Cup were the most watched events on NZ TV since 1995, TVNZ reports (see below). The final drew 2.03 million viewers, the semi-final 2.02 million and the opening ceremony, 1.93 million. TV One had the lion’s share of total viewers for the final, with 687,200, […]

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: TV2, 7.30pm Saturday. Johnny Depp is the Bugs Bunny of buccaneers in this pirates-parrots-and-pearls romp that nearly won him his first Oscar. His goofy, roguish classic trickster owes more to the Looney Tunes and Groucho Marx than Long John Silver. Hence, this pirate ghost ship […]

On the eve of the Blu-ray release of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, TV2 will screen the free-to-air HD premiere of Captain Jack Sparrow’s first hearty ha-ha adventure. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl will air 7.30pm on October 8 – the same week TV2 screens in HD the movies […]

TV One’s HD crime hit, Criminal Minds, faced tough competition last night from TV3’s free-to-air HD premiere of Taken. While the former fended off the latter with its target audience, 25-54 year-olds – 13.1% vs 11% — with 18-49 year-olds, Taken came out on top: 10.5% vs 10.3% (although TV2’s SD movie, Sweet Home Alabama, […]

The Brothers Bloom: Sky Movies, 8.30pm Saturday. Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo play dirty rotten siblings – globe-trotting swindlers – who get their “con”-uppance when they embark on one last scam targeting a naïve, New Jersey heiress (Rachel Weisz). Reviews ranged from the ecstatic to the execrable but most echoed Roger Ebert’s: “This movie is […]

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: Sky Movies Greats, 8.30pm Saturday. Johnny Depp is the Bugs Bunny of buccaneers in this pirates-parrots-and-pearls romp that nearly won him his first Oscar. His goofy, roguish classic trickster owes more to the Looney Tunes gang and Groucho Marx than Long John Silver. Hence, this […]